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SPEECH 



HON. CHARLES B. SEDGWICK, 

OF NEAV YORK, ^ 

OM THE BILL 

TO RAISE ADDITIONAL SOLDIERS. 



DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. 30, 1863. 

The House having under consideration the bill to raise additional soldiers for the service 
of the Government, Mr. SEDGWICK said : 

Mr. Speaker : I am in favor of the bill which is before the 
House for its consideration, for the reason that I believe it to 
be a proper and necessary measure to carry out the settled 
policy of the Government in the conduct of the war. 

This Congress has already twice approved the principle 
upon which this bill proceeds ; and it is only necessary be- 
cause the two acts of Congress which have already santioned 
the employment of negroes in the military service were defi- 
cient in detail. But as the policy of the employment of col- 
ored men has been attacked in the course of this debate, I 
trust to the patience of the House to hear me for a few mo- 
ments, while I undertake to defend the policy of the Govern- 
ment in reference to these measures. 

This war is strictly a war of self-defense. The Government 
ha$^ been forced and is trying to defend the principles upon 
which the Republic is founded, against the encroachments 
and unreasonable and unconstitutional demands, and^ finally, 
the warlike violence of an insolent aristocracy. This aristoc- 
racy is of the most detestable character, depending neither 
upon long descent and ancient renown, nor upon any great 
achievement in arts or in arms, nor on great commercial or 
manufiicturing success tending to develop a country's re- 
sources and add to its prosperity, nor on great accomplish- 
ments in literature, but solely on human slavery. It is the 
foe of labor, incompatible with free public education, with 
commercial prosperity, entirely irreconcilable with the prin- 
ciples of true democracy. It is an aristocracy impatient of re- 
straint, intolerant, insolent ; assuming a superiority which it 
never can possess, and to which it is entitled neither by birth, 
education, nor superior capacity. To establish the right of 
this aristocratic class to the mastery of this Government they 
have set on foot this rebellion, have inflamed the pas- 
sions of their people by artful appeals to the prejudices of the 
ignorant, and have invoked the arbitrament of the sword. 



" mere brutum fulmen as the proclamation. It is despised and 
trampled on. Ko officer sworn to support it, and no one pre- 
tending to abide by its provisions', exists throughout the length 
and breadth of their country; no Federal court is open to 
hear the complaints of sutors ; no tribunal existing under the 
authority of the Constitution exists within the rebel States. 
And I ask gentlemen what more power and efficiency has the 
Constitution than the proclamation of the President ? That 
proclamation goes before and in aid of the Constitution. It 
lifts up the loyal people friendly to the Constitution, strikes 
off their shackles, and will enable them to enforce respect for 
its authority. 

It is said it will produce insurrection and servile war. Is 
insurrection of the slave against the master so much, worse 
than the insurrection and rebellion of the master against the 
Government and the Constitution ? Is servile war so much 
more full of horrors than a civilwar? 

But the proclamation does no such thing. It incites neither 
insurrection nor a servile war, but this bill puts arms into the 
hands oi freemen^ not of slaves — but into the hands oi free- 
men fighting at the same time for the preservation of the Gov- 
ernment and their own liberties. It is said that these men 
are timid and cowardly, and that to them the eword is a ter- 
ror. But inspired by the hopes of liberty, with motives of 
home and family, with motives of advancement and improve- 
ment, you will find that the slaves of the plantation differ 
from the freemen armed by the authority of this bill to fight 
for their own liberty. 

For such a people, in such a contest the swor(J has no 
terrors — 

"The sword! a name of dread 1 
But when upon &freemarCs thigh 'tis bound, 
While for his altar and his hearth, 
While for the land which gave him birth, 
The war drums roll — the trumpets sound, 
How sacred is the sword." 

There .never has been an instance in history, there never 
can be an instance in history, where humanity has become so 
degraded that it cannot strike for freedom. 

But gentlemen say it is a confession of failure to employ 
the negro. Why, the greatest republic of the Old World 
was saved by the cackling of geese. Rome was saved by 
this bird; and I think sometimes, when I hear these mattera 
discussed, that gentlemen on the other side seem to prefer 
that way of salvation to the employinent of the negro. 
[Laughter.] . 

But is it true that these men are unfit for soldiers and for 
sailors ? What has been the experience of our country ? It 
is no new experiment. Instances have been brought to the 
notice of this House repeatedly of the raising of regiments 
of slaves in Rhode Island ; the employment of negroes in New 



York ; the fighting of the battles of the Eevohition by men 
•of color, stimulated by promises of freedom as their reward. 

And numerous are the testimonials of men of character 
and intelligence who have the respect of the country, and 
whose names are emblazoned upon its history, testifying to 
the efficiency of these men in other times and other contests. 
Gentlemen upon this floor yesterday said that we should make 
ourselves the scorn of Europe if we appeal to the negro to 
fight our battles ; and yet at this very day there is hardly a 
European State that does not now employ, and has not con- 
stantly for years employed, colored soldiers in all their depen- 
dencies, where colored men, by reason of climate or other- 
wise, could be used and made of service. So Denmark and 
England and Holland and France and Spain and Portugal 
have all had organized regiments of negroes in their armies 
at different times. The gentleman who has just taken his 
seat has said that Eome's legions were her citizens ; and that 
the citizens of all the ancient republics were those who fought 
their battles. The gentleman should not forget that the name 
of Spartacus, the Thracian gladiator, at the head of an army 
of slaves, was the terror and the scourge of Eome— drove 
back, defeated, and disgraced her consuls, at the head of her 
legions, to the very gates of the city, and left upon the plains 
of Italy the marks of desolation and ruin which time has not 
yet efifaced. 

But we have some experience in this rebellion in relation 
to the efficiency of negro soldiers. There are at this moment 
serving in the Navy of the United States probably five thou- 
sand colored seamen. I have in my possession a letter from 
the commander of the fleet on the Mississippi, Rear Admiral 
iPorter which says that he has shipped upon his squadron four 
hundred negroes, able-bodied contrabands, who work at the 
guns, and that he hopes in a little time to make the number 
a thousand. This excludes all who are employed upon the 
transports at Cairo, and upon the powder ships. At Hatteras, 
Commodore Stringham testifies to the courage and conduct of 
the negro crew working one of the guns of the Minnesota. 
Admiral Du Pont, at Port Royal, bears the same testimony. 
Colonel Beard, who led them upon an expedition so dangerous 
that he could not induce white soldiers to follow him, testifies 
to their good conduct and courage, and he shows his faith in 
negro soldiers by resigning the position he held in the Army, 
the command of a white regiment, and coming back and ask- 
ing the President to put him at the head of the negro soldiers 
to be raised, that he may take them into the country of the 
enemy. General Butler, following the example of General 
Moor, the rebel governor of Louisiana, who had commission- 
ed a colored captain of a company of colored soldiers, organ- 
ized, with the sanction of the Govetnment, the colored men 



6 

in N'ew Orleans to fight the battles of the Union, instead of 
fighting the battles of the rebellion. 

And with all this testimony upon the subject — the concur- 
rent testimony of all civilized nations, the testimony of our 
own history, and the examples which this war has produced, 
is it to be said now that the negro is an efficient soldier ; and 
is it to be said that the country does not need his services? 
In a few months the term of service of the two years en- 
listed soldiers from New York and other States will expire, 
and it is a very large number. In a little more time the ser- 
vices of the nine months men, raised last summer, will expire ; 
and with traitors in the North resisting conscription, with rebel 
and semi-rebel authority in the North, and traitor sympa- 
thizers in high places resisting conscription and discouraging 
drafting, I ask if it is not common sense to appeal to that 
class of loyal citizens, who, I believe, will make good soWiers, 
having the highest motives to success, and who have been 
demonstrated to be such, and take them into the public ser- 
vice as soldiers and sailors. 

The confederate authorities complain of their conscription 
laws that they allow one man to be exempt for every twenty 
slaves, making an army of one hundred and fifty thousand 
men who might be brought into the service of the rebel 
authorities if they were not compelled to stay at home to 
watch the negroes. Now, suppose one hundred and fifty 
thousand of those slaves upon the plantations had arms in 
their hands, without any organization, without any interfer- 
ence by the officers of the Government, how many more men 
do you think would stay at home from the rebel ranks to 
watch them ? Why, the very fact that these men, by their 
own admissions, are driven to this necessity, shows that if the 
negroes had arms put into their hands to enforce their own 
rights against the rebels, it would disperse in a day the whole 
rebel army. They could not stay in the field if the negroes 
on the plantations were barely furnishe^'^'-with arms, though 
without instruction or discipline. 

But it is said dissatisfaction is to be produced by this. You 
hear threats of combinations of white men to resist this arm- 
"ing of negroes. And this is the love for the Constitution of 
those who at this day have undertaken its guardianship ; those 
who have habitually violated it for years. These are the men 
who come forward now as the special advocates of the Con- 
stitution ; men whose political strength and control have been 
secured by infractions of the Constitution ; the men for whose 
purposes Louisiana was purchased without constitutional au- 
thority, and Florida, and, in our own day, Texas. And yet 
these things have been yielded to as accomplished facts, 
and so will it be with this proclamation, even though it had 
not the sanction of constitutional authority, when once you 
put this bill into practical operation ; for no community of 



negroes who have once had arms in their hands can again he 
subjugated to the restraints of slavery. History furnishes no 
such example. The arming of the slave population is the 
end of the institution for all time, and no less the end of this 
rebellion. 

I talk not about the Constitution. It has become in the 
hands of the timid lawyers and time-serving politicians, a 
shield between the Government and the persons and the 
estates of the rebels. "To such base uses has it eome at 
last." It is continually frustrating the eftorts of this Govern- 
ment to put down this rebellion. The men who can stand up 
here and use it for no other, no better purpose, I care not how 
honored such men may be ; I care not how long may have 
been their public service; I care not how illustrious their career; 
the men who come here and in this way destroy the love of 
every man and his respect for the Constitution of his country, 
it may be justly said of the best of them : 

"Superfluous lag8 the veteran on the stage. " 

It is time that his departure was signalized. The true way to 
enlist the sympathies of this people in behalf of the Consti- 
tution of the country is to show them that it is no longer to be 
used for the protection of an institution hostile to all its prin- 
ciples. It is time that the people should be taught the prac- 
tical lesson that the great ends for which the framers of the 
Constitution made it, to form a more perfect union, promote 
the general welfare, and secure and perpetuate liberty, are to 
be thought of in the uses which politicians shall make of the 
instrument. 

JSow, sir, while the timid are disheartened; while the dis- 
loyal grow bold and threatening and riotous ; while wicked 
partisans are striving to rise upon the ruins of their country ; 
while a sham Democracy are shutting the door in the face of. 
northern laborers a'- i southern laborers, and the emigrants^ 
from Europe to the avenues to the fertile fields of the ttouth^, 
and trying to perpetuate, in the name of human rights, the 
vilest and most infamous aristocracy with which a long-auf- 
fering country was ever cursed, this most wise and humane 
and necessary measure is rallying around *^^'^ Government, 
and will bring to its aid a class of earnest, ughtful, con- 
scientious men ; of men who, however they i j^ be sneered 
at and despised, have always fixed the destiny Df nations and 
controlled the policy of their age ; who have established the 
rights of conscience, fought the battles of civil liberty upon 
a hundred fields, and snatched popular rights from unwill- 
ing despots ; Puritans, if you will ; Eoundheads, if you will ; 
whose ancestors were the soldiers and companions of Crom- 
well, who engraved upon their shields the motto of "trust in 
God ;" the heroes of every age ; the masters and conquerors 
of the aristocrats in every controversy which. they have sought 
with them, and where they have brought privilege in con- 



flict with popular rights. These are the men who, with their 
strong arms, will rally around this proclamation and the: 
policy of the Government. They will sustain it ; they will 
sustain it triumphantly ; they will carry the policy announced 
in this proclamation to its legitimate ends. 

Let me assure gentlemen that the logical consequences of 
this controversy do not stop even here. We have already 
provided by a law of Congress for the sale of estates for 
taxes in insurrectionary territory. I hope that before the 
end of this Congress we shall pass a law for the seizure and 
confiscation of the fee of rebels in their land — a thoroughly 
constitutional measure, in my judgment — not merely of the 
life estate, but of the whole estate. I hope to see the estates 
of rebels distributed, under our homestead law, to emigrants ; 
to see them divided in bounties to our soldiers ; to see a well- 
considered system of land laws, in which all sales of the 
public domain in the rebel States shall be upon the invaria- 
ble condition that freedom shall be impressed upon the soil, 
atid that a forfeiture of the estate shall follow the holding 
or the working of a slave thereon — a perfectly competent 
condition for the Government to impose in the sale of its 
lands, and one which conflicts with no State law, and inter- 
feres with no State law for the protection of slavery. They 
may hold the institution, but they shall not hold it upon the' 
lands of the Government. 

These are some of the bitter but wholesome and necessary 
fruits of this rebellion. They put an end to the vilest aris- 
tocracy upon which the sun has ever shone ; and when that 
is accomplished, no child in the distant future, as he plays 
upon the battle-fields of this contest with 'the bleached bonee^ 
of our soldiers, shall have old traditions satisfy his curiosity 
with the idle and empty sound that, although liberty has 
gained nothing, although humanity has gained nothing, 
although progress and civilization have gained nothing, yet, 
" 'twas a famous victory ?" "We want something more deci- 
sive than barren victory and conquest. The madness of the 
slaveholder has put his institution in our hands. We are re- 
sponsible for <' se of thepower with which he', in his folly, 
has intrusted ■ ; and we should see to it that the basis of 
justice, equai , and liberty upon which our independence 
was gained, the basis upon which our Constitution was form- 
ed, should, by the exercise of our legitimate authority, be so 
established in this land that, to the end of time, the genera- 
tions that come after us shall look back and call down bless- 
ings upon this Congress. 

IfoTE. — I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Wra. Whiting, Esq,, a 
distinguished member of the Boston Bar, for his admirable treatise on "The 
War Powers of the President, and the Legislative Powers of Congress, in rela- 
tion to Rebellion, Treason and Slavery." 



